Applying your fixes file
This is the working chapter. Open your fixes file in one window and your website editor in another, and work top to bottom. Every row is the same three-part move: find the page, find the field, paste the green line.
The rhythm
- Read the row. It names the page (its address), shows the current line in red, and the corrected line in green.
- Open that page in your website editor — not on the live site, in the editor where you change things.
- Find the field (the next section shows where it lives in the common editors).
- Paste the green line exactly. No improvements, no “while I’m here”. The line was measured to fit.
- Save, and tick the row off. Then the next row. Most rows take under a minute once you find the rhythm.
Where the fields live, by editor
- Shopify: open the product or page → scroll to “Search engine listing” → Edit. The “Page title” box is the title; the “Meta description” box is the description. Blog posts have the same section at the bottom of the post editor.
- WordPress: with the usual SEO plugin installed (Yoast or Rank Math), every page and post shows a snippet box below the editor — title line and description line. Without a plugin, ask your theme’s documentation where “SEO title” lives, or install one of the two above; both are free for this purpose.
- Wix: open the page → Settings (or the three dots) → SEO basics. “Title tag” and “Meta description” are the two fields.
- Squarespace: page settings (the gear icon) → SEO tab → “SEO title” and “SEO description”.
- Shop or site builders not listed: search the builder’s own help for “edit meta description” — every builder has the two fields somewhere, usually under Settings or SEO.
What a row looks like — one from our own shop’s file
That is the whole shape: the page, the fault in red, the fix in green. Yours will have its own rows, written for your pages.
The three habits that prevent mistakes
- Copy from the file, not from memory. The measured line is the one in the file.
- One row, one save. Batch-editing ten pages and saving once is how a browser crash eats an hour.
- Do not touch what the file does not mention. A page absent from your fixes file was measured and found fine. Leave it.
When a page in the file no longer exists
Occasionally a row points at a page you have since deleted or renamed. If you renamed it, apply the fix to the new address. If you deleted it on purpose, skip the row — and if other pages still link to the deleted one, set a redirect from the old address to the closest living page (every builder has a “URL redirects” screen; search its help for exactly those words).
How long this really takes
A typical file of fifty to a hundred rows is an afternoon at a steady pace — genuinely. The work is not clever, it is careful. Put on some music.
And when the file is cleared: the pay-off shows the next time you measure — run a fresh audit and a second dated score sits beside your first, showing what the afternoon bought.
YOUR REPORT NAMES YOURS — the free check runs live at auditlodge.com